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Cranial bone imaging using ultrashort echo-time bone-selective MRI as an alternative to gradient-echo based “black-bone” techniques

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Abstract

Objectives

CT is the clinical standard for surgical planning of craniofacial abnormalities in pediatric patients. This study evaluated three MRI cranial bone imaging techniques for their strengths and limitations as a radiation-free alternative to CT.

Methods

Ten healthy adults were scanned at 3 T with three MRI sequences: dual-radiofrequency and dual-echo ultrashort echo time sequence (DURANDE), zero echo time (ZTE), and gradient-echo (GRE). DURANDE bright-bone images were generated by exploiting bone signal intensity dependence on RF pulse duration and echo time, while ZTE bright-bone images were obtained via logarithmic inversion. Three skull segmentations were derived, and the overlap of the binary masks was quantified using dice similarity coefficient. Craniometric distances were measured, and their agreement was quantified.

Results

There was good overlap of the three masks and excellent agreement among craniometric distances. DURANDE and ZTE showed superior air-bone contrast (i.e., sinuses) and soft-tissue suppression compared to GRE.

Discussions

ZTE has low levels of acoustic noise, however, ZTE images had lower contrast near facial bones (e.g., zygomatic) and require effective bias-field correction to separate bone from air and soft-tissue. DURANDE utilizes a dual-echo subtraction post-processing approach to yield bone-specific images, but the sequence is not currently manufacturer-supported and requires scanner-specific gradient-delay corrections.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

Study supported by the National Institutes of Health: NIH R21 DE028417, NIH T32 EB020087, F31 AR079925.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Nada Kamona, Brandon C. Jones, Hyunyeol Lee, Hee Kwon Song, Chamith S. Rajapakse & Felix W. Wehrli

  2. Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Nada Kamona & Brandon C. Jones

  3. School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea

    Hyunyeol Lee

  4. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Chamith S. Rajapakse

  5. Division of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Oral Surgery, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Connor S. Wagner & Scott P. Bartlett

Authors
  1. Nada Kamona
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Contributions

FWW, HL, HKS, CSR, and SB conceptualized and designed the study; NK acquired the data; NK, BCJ, and CW analyzed and interpreted the data; NK and FWW drafted the initial manuscript; NK, HKS, and FWW reviewed and edited the manuscript; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Felix W. Wehrli.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Ethical standards

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were approved by the University of Pennsylvania’s institutional review board and made in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

Informed consent

Written informed consent was obtained from all participants, in accordance with the University of Pennsylvania’s institutional review board requirements.

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Kamona, N., Jones, B.C., Lee, H. et al. Cranial bone imaging using ultrashort echo-time bone-selective MRI as an alternative to gradient-echo based “black-bone” techniques. Magn Reson Mater Phy 37, 83–92 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-023-01125-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-023-01125-8

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